Comments on: BBC Future Column: Why is it so hard to give good directions?http://mindhacks.com/2012/11/12/bbc-future-column-why-is-it-so-hard-to-give-good-directions/
Neuroscience and psychology news and views.Sun, 02 Aug 2015 12:59:22 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: 5i5ihttp://mindhacks.com/2012/11/12/bbc-future-column-why-is-it-so-hard-to-give-good-directions/#comment-40881
Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:50:59 +0000http://mindhacks.com/?p=24912#comment-40881It’s just about empathy. It’s really not that hard to put yourself in someone else’s situation and tailor the instructions accordingly.
]]>By: plexityhttp://mindhacks.com/2012/11/12/bbc-future-column-why-is-it-so-hard-to-give-good-directions/#comment-40477
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 23:05:06 +0000http://mindhacks.com/?p=24912#comment-40477The counter to the Maine man is the “and if you get to the big pub on the right with the hanging baskets, think it’s called the Chequers, you’ve gone too far”

This “error detection” addition is the key to good directions.

]]>By: 1weaverhttp://mindhacks.com/2012/11/12/bbc-future-column-why-is-it-so-hard-to-give-good-directions/#comment-40417
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:14:22 +0000http://mindhacks.com/?p=24912#comment-40417good stuff. would that it were applied universally wherever people gather to dialogue on timely issues.
practice makes (almost) perfect.
]]>By: ameliehttp://mindhacks.com/2012/11/12/bbc-future-column-why-is-it-so-hard-to-give-good-directions/#comment-40408
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:31:00 +0000http://mindhacks.com/?p=24912#comment-40408Good advice for communication. Of course you’ll always have the folks from Maine who say things like “turn left where the pharmacy used to be”.

I don’t quite get why we compare something like Theory of Mind (that was developed for humans in the first place) against the experience of non-primates who adapt relative to their environment.

Cats for example sometimes know where their prey plan to escape to. It doesn’t involve empathy, but what use would a cat (or squid, giraffe etc) have for empathy anyway? They still have adaptations that help them read signals from non-self individuals. Maybe it’s a Relative Theory of Mind?

Directions (and instructions in general) are given through language, which means they are expressed through our explicit memory system. However, their purpose is to guide actions and movements, which are usually dependent on our implicit memory system. So, you are trying to guide one system (implicit memory) through the use of another system (explicit memory).

This same problem affects many instruction manuals. They try to explain through language something that is done through actions. To overcome this, many people ignore the manuals and try to find out how to do things by trying or by asking someone else that already knows how to do it. The current popularity of troubleshooting videos is possibly a consequence of this, as you don’t need direct contact with some expert, you just need to find the video.